What's the Biggest Decision Kyle Whittingham Can Make During Michigan's Bye Week?

Michigan football has reached its bye week. Kyle Whittingham is facing what he has called the biggest challenge in his 40-plus years of coaching.

He has a lot of decisions to make through the bye week with a lot of outside noise starting to penetrate the airwaves.

What's the biggest decision that Kyle Whittingham can make? It comes at quarterback.

Culture Setting

You will become us, we will not become you. Those are Kyle Whittingham's words and the culture he wanted to set when he took the job at Michigan.

Through five weeks in his first season as a head coach, we've talked about how those words are starting to sound pretty empty, with not a lot of answers in sight to the questions that have plagued the Wolverines all season long.

Following Michigan's loss to Iowa, people were disappointed, but able to acknowledge one bright spot. Bryce Underwood had played his best game as a Michigan Wolverine. He threw two touchdown passes, and looked comfortable.

One week later, Underwood and the rest of the offense was brutal as Michigan was only able to muster seven points on offense as Minnesota pulled off an upset.

That has led to more calls, from some prominent voices for Bryce Underwood to be benched.

Ignore the Outside Noise

Benching the quarterback is an easy answer. It gives the masses a scalp on the wall, and turns Underwood into a scapegoat for what has been wrong in Michigan's offense for the first five games of the season.

It gives the fanbase and pundits a new player to latch onto as hope.

Underwood came into Michigan as a beacon of hope after poor quarterback play helped sink Michigan's 2024 season.

He started as a true freshman without much competition when he probably wasn't ready to play. Michigan could not bench him because the options behind him were either injured, our not ready to play.

As a result, Underwood had to play in a bad situation for most of his freshman season, which reinforced a lot of his bad habits that did not get better throughout his freshman season.

Enter Tommy Carr.

Carr is Michigan's backup quarterback right now. He's a true freshman who has played one meaningful series as a college quarterback. He entered the game after Michigan had started to pull away from UTEP in Week 3.

To Carr's credit, he drove the field and threw an impressive touchdown pass to Salesi Moa. He looked good.

When things look ugly, the backup QB often becomes the most popular player on the roster amongst fans
Tommy Carr is becoming that guy pic.twitter.com/BXt8fALspz

- Jake B (@MichFootballBEL) October 5, 2026

That performance also came against a vastly inferior team, who had been beaten by that point of the game.

Those clamoring for Carr to start are basing it largely on that performance, and a brief cameo in the spring game.

Reality Check

The reality for the Michigan football program is that Bryce Underwood is the person they're tied to. That's true from an NIL perspective. It's true on the field as well.

He was voted as a team captain in the offseason, an honor typically reserved for upperclassmen. The coaching staff spent their entire offseason trying to figure out how to get the most out of him.

Five games is not enough of a sample to pull the plug, even if he has not played well in some of those games. Underwood has been a mixed bag. The problem has been that the bad has been very bad. Underwood looked unplayable against Western Michigan and Minnesota.

He was asked to be a care taker against Oklahoma before breaking out against UTEP and Iowa.

TD MICHIGAN !
QB Bryce Underwood trouve WR JJ Buchanan et les Wolverines repassent devant Iowa ! 19-14. pic.twitter.com/ziW1fDs3sh

- TBP College Football (@thebluepennant) September 26, 2026

There is more evidence at this point that Bryce Underwood can execute than there is of Tommy Carr.

Thrusting Carr into the starting lineup would be setting him up to fail. That's not fair to him, nor is it the best option for the team.

The Big Decision

So what is the big decision for Kyle Whittingham? Yes, it'd be easy to put his quarterback on the bench and let outside optics say he never wanted him in the first place. Whittingham inherited Underwood, he did not recruit him to Michigan.

The decision for Whittingham to make is to ignore the outside noise. The upside of Underwood has come in small glimpses this season.

That upside is what Michigan has to bank on if they're going to get anywhere near some of their goals.

If it doesn't work, a competition can be opened to start next season with Carr and whoever else is in the quarterback room.

Whittingham has to ignore the outside noise and stay the course, even if that's not the easy decision.

Sign up for the Michigan Wolverines on SI newsletterfor more free coverage

Today's best reads

• Wolverine Thoughts: Michigan Can Bench Bryce Underwood - That Won't Fix Stubborn Woes
• Michigan Football Panic Meter After Rough Loss to Minnesota
• Urban Meyer Calls Michigan Football a 'Train Wreck' - Is There a Fix?
• Michigan's Offense Has 'A Lot of Issues' - How Does Kyle Whittingham Plan on Fixing Them?
• Michigan Football Enters Bye Week Searching for Answers and 'Weeding Out' Players

This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/michigan as What's the Biggest Decision Kyle Whittingham Can Make During Michigan's Bye Week?.